Apple iPhone 5s vs. HTC One: quick look

Apple just recently announced the new iPhone 5S, though some argue it doesn’t really bring that many improvements over the iPhone 5. Nonetheless, just how well does this newer model do compared to HTC’s giant, the One? That’ll be up for you to decide. Let’s take a look, shall we?

Design and build quality

Much like the HTC One, the iPhone 5S is clad in aluminum, giving it a nice hefty feel. Build quality is great, and as for unique design features it has chamfered edges and the home button is made of laser-cut sapphire crystal with a stainless steel detection ring circling it.

The HTC One also has a nice hefty feel to it. Build quality is fantastic, and with it’s sleek design, the HTC One is a really nice looking device.

Display

The iPhone 5S features the usual 4-inch Retina display with full sRGB standard and widescreen video. It’s capable of 640 x 1,136 resolution, rated at 326ppi.

As for the HTC One, we have a 4.7-inch Full HD Super LCD 3 screen, capable of 1,980 x 1,080 resolution, rated at a record breaking 468ppi.

Camera

The iPhone 5S has 8-megapixel optics strapped to its back, featuring f2.2 aperture. It also has a two-LED flash, one cool and white, while the other is warm and amber. This should give more natural tones when taking pics in low light. Finally, the camera has 15% larger active sensor area (1.5microns pixels) compared to the previous generation, iOS 7 optimizations for nicer images (auto image stabilization, new burst mode that takes 10 frames per second) and 720p video recording at 120fps.

In the other corner, we have the HTC One with a 4 UltraPixel rear camera, which features OIS (Optical Image Stabilization). Thanks to Sense 5, you get a host of camera app features, too. This includes things like HDR, Panorama mode, and HTC Zoe, among many other features.

Battery

In the iPhone 5S we have a non-removable Li-Po 1,570 mAh battery, allowing up to 10 hours of battery on LTE and Wi-Fi browsing.

The HTC One’s non-removable battery is a much larger Li-Po 2,300 mAh unit. How much you get out of it really depends on what you’re doing (e.g. media consumption, browsing Facebook, and etc).

Other Specs

The iPhone 5S features a Apple A7 64-bit dual-core chip, clocked at 1.3GHz, which the company claims will offer 40x CPU performance and 56x faster graphics than the original iPhone. It also has 1GB of RAM and will come in 16/32/64GB storage options. Finally, it features a fingerprint scanner, which can be used to unlock the device and for buying stuff on the App Store.

As for the HTC One, you get a quad-core Snapdragon 600 processor, clocked in at 1.7GHz. It has 2GB of RAM and comes in 32GB and 64GB options, however, the latter model is an exclusive through AT&T.

Software

In the iPhone 5S, you get the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 7. It has been pretty much completely redesigned, and it comes with quite a handful of new features, which you can read about here.

Looking at the HTC One, you get Sense 5 atop of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, with rumors of update to 4.3 just around the corner. You can expect to see a handful of preloaded apps from HTC and a few other useful features built in to the OS, such as battery saving options.

Hands-On Video

Wrap Up

For the most part, the iPhone 5S is an impressive device, at least for the OS it’s running. It doesn’t need to be super powerful, as iOS just isn’t as demanding as Android, nor are there apps that will put the device’s specs to the test.

Nonetheless, the HTC One is a fan favorite among Android users, and it has its own strong points, from a larger and nicer screen, to the camera, and powerful speakers.

Either way, both devices are fantastic in their own ways, though we do have to admit, the iPhone 5S hasn’t changed much from its predecessor, which is a bit disappointing, as expectations were quite high for this year’s iPhone refresh.